Monday, August 28, 2006

Last Week of the Doldrums?

The market is up fairly substantially this morning (Dow +75 points as of this writing), but my portfolios are pretty much unchanged. The reason is that any losses are being offset by my shorts in oil- and gold-related stocks, both of which are having a down day.

The market has been in a low-volume funk for a long time. Word on the street is that, once Labor Day is passed us this weekend, we'll return to normalcy. I sure hope so. These markets are really dull right now.

The S&P 500 is terrifyingly close to crossing its 78.6% Fib retracement (sort of the last holdout....) at the 1303.80 level. It's less than a point away from it now. Not the end of the world if it crosses it, but it puts another thumbtack into the bearish coffin if it does.

In the meantime, here are some interesting looking short possibilities. I've put a red "stop order if crossed" line on most of these........

ADBE:


DRQ:


EOG:


HAL:


MCK:


RIG:


XAU:

16 comments:

John G. Black said...

I'm getting tired of these thumb tacks!! After a while, they start to hurt...a lot like hitting your head with a hammer.

John

niko said...

Tim,

What do you think about the right shoulder of the XAU in fact being an ascending triangle?

Hard to tell without volume numbers. I'm in puts, but will likely get out on a contingent $140, or whenever it looks like the lower border of the possible triangle.

Anonymous said...

Hello. Great blog! It is now part of my daily reading.

Last week I had puts on TXT and ROK which I closed Friday for 100% gains -- not bad for 5 days. I currently have UNP left from last week, and today I entered LM and WY. And, of course, the maket is up 102 pts!!!

So far okay, but if this is going to go on all week I'll probably get stopped out ;(

How long can they keep this sucker up? I hate being in the red even if I know it's going to turn around later...

Thanks again, Lee

Anonymous said...

One word of caution about shorting HAL: the money flow is still very good for the last month or so. I wouldn't be surprised to see HAL break out to the upside once NGas stops dropping like a rock. In fact, I might even consider going long on HAL in the $33 area, with a stop around $32.50. It can still retest the 200-day, which is around $35 or so.

Anyways, I also wanted to share this little tidbit from another site (Alchemy of Trading):

"Well, with the equity market stagnating like a putrid waterhole, it's harder and harder to power up in the morning knowing that if you put a trade on you're joining a bunch of brain-damaged trading addicts and other assorted freaks pounding out orders on their keyboards at home in their underwear........in the best of cases.

I'll pass."

-Tony

Anonymous said...

Tim,
Are we watching the same market?
S&P is 13 points from 52 week highs and the dow is up over 100 today.

The Trader II

Tim Knight said...

"Are we watching the same market?
S&P is 13 points from 52 week highs and the dow is up over 100 today."

I don't understand the confusion or the comment. I mentioned the Dow was up 75 points, yes, but that was earlier in the day. Where's the puzzlement?

Anonymous said...

Forget about 10,000 or even that 10,660 number that was coming up in the blogs.It would take enormously bad news to just get back to 11,000.If they don't sell this off into the close today and then you also have a solid up day tmrw.,then very strong new support levels will be in effect for the DJIA,the S&P,and the OEX.,not to mention that the NASDQ is on a tear and so is the Utilty index going for all time highs.That is considered a leading "BULLISH" indicator by "technicians".I don't really like it ,but it may create some opportunities and 100 pt. days are never boring,whichever direction the mrket is going !

Denver

Anonymous said...

sold all my puts at a loss. going to start buying calls on the next correction. may have to start using this site as a contrarian indicator - this is the strangest bear market i have ever seen.

Anonymous said...

I don't even think enormously bad news would do it....this seems to be another "everything changed after 911," bad news = market rally. Israel sends troops into another ME country, gold goes -12. Oil up, market rallies. Oil down, market rallies. "Terra" scare, market ambivalent at first, but rallies later. Market Matrix.

Anonymous said...

Tim,
I was referring to your comment on the markets are really dull right now. I think the doldrum week have passed and the fun started today. Do you believe in the 4 year cycle lows?

The Trader II

walter said...

scottrade can no longer borrow a portion of my MBT short position... have to cover some before 1pm est tomorrow...

going down?

Anonymous said...

Walter, What does that mean, that they can't borrow a portion?

(Newbie questions, sorry)

walter said...

that means that the MBT shares that i borrowed from the scottrade pool (to short on the open market) of stocks held long by everyone with a scottrade account are running out - the pool of MBT stock held long is going down (i.e., scottrade longs are selling) when it hits critical level, all scottraders that have that stock short have to cover some amount... in the end, you cant borrow and short a stock that isnt held long by someone

Anonymous said...

I'm not closing any positions but I'm not opening any either. Volumes are low, VXN is low but could go lower. The ranges aren't wide enough.

Looks like traders are anticipating breakouts/breakdowns. They last a couple days and pffft!

Upgrade on chips looks too early to me, got stopped out of my SMH short. And stopped out of my PFE short as well. So trade what you see and use stops.

re: OIH short. Nice move today but no volume. A break of the 134 is the next test, then 130. But no volume, I'll probably close the position.

ZZZZZZZ.

bsi87

walter said...

is SNDK a giant head and shoulders now?

Anonymous said...

Hi Tim

I found your graphs and technical analysis very interesting.

what do u think about CSCO and GTW. Where do you think these are going to head.

Thanks